Preserved Topic: new site up ?? [crit]like that doc twitch posted :-)

ok here is my newsite. could you plz tell me what you like and dont like about the interface/and nav... etc

thanx everyone.
http://catgirl.mokushi.net

uhm.. you're going to get a "mikey milker" critique, the ones i have been dishing out since i first got here and started making "friends" muahaha.

first off, i've been going through the whole site and it seems to load a little bit slow.. i'm not really sure why (maybe it's the 28.8 connection), but before i waste any time trying to figure out i'm just curious if anyone else had the same problem.

first off there's the splash page.. you establish two nice tones of gray on the front that work very well together, though overall i'm kind of curious why you'd want this as a splash page. everyone around here tends to scream bloody murder at non-functional web pages, but i justify mine by saying it has a neat-o piece of work i threw together... something i think is worth showing off just for fun. i don't know if i can say the same about your front page, but i guess it loads fast so it really isn't too bothersome. just something you might want to consider.

general problems i noticed throughout the site.. you really need padding in your tables, the way your text goes right up to the border just looks bad and makes it harder to read.

the "section headers" are a little hard to read, the ones like "news" that appear directly over the tables containing information... i'd try to define their edges with a black or dark gray almost.

next overall design problem.. i really dig your header graphic, but there's way too much space between it's botton and the top of your actual pages. i'd try narrowing that up to half the distance.

actually i've got a better idea. i realize that your top graphic is also your navigation, but i really dislike the way on your page the header graphic takes up so much space and new stuff loads in the below frame. i think it'd look 100 times better if you didn't use frames and instead the WHOLE page scrolled.

i might try working a little bit of sepia tones into the header graphic as well, maybe even some subtle colors in the mouseovers... just the right amount of color could completely set this design off.

another nit-pick, when i scroll to the bottom of a page, there should be gray background shown after the table ends. it looks bad how the tables just stop abruptly.

one final thing you might want to consider working into the site is a subtle blue or orange for text links or other important information on your pages. everything gets really lost with the gray text, background, blah blah blah.

all right, that should do it for now.. hope some of this helps!

cheers.mikey.milker

I was all set to look this over, after reading Mikey's breakdown of it. Checking out the site for small design flaws, or wondrous marvels was going to be fun, I thought.....and then it popped up in my new browser...I clicked...I looked....and I promptly closed the browser again.

There's a dirty little thing I coined a phrase for here a long time ago. The Horizontal Scrollbar of Death? has long been the bad seed of good design. There are times when horizontal scrolling is intentional for the design..and for those times, we make an exception....this is not one of them. No, this took on a whole new bad seed all by itself. There was no horizontal scrollbar on the 800x600 unmaximized popup....This http://salvagion.com/doc_o/catgirl.jpg
was all that I could see.


Now, anyone who clicks to look, notices that not only can I not read part of the main text area as it overlaps the right textarea without a scrollbar, but I can't see the navigation for the site on the huge header part almost at all. Yep, we managed a brand new one now...I present the Horizontal Non-Scroll of Death?

I'm not getting down on the design at all, but to say, if you don't consider the 640x480 folks anymore..that's fine, it's filtering out of usage...but if you put up a site that people on 600x800 can't even view, then you're sunk from the get go.....as I was in the unmaximized window.

I set them at that size for a reason...now I recall why.

I can't comment on the rest of the site, I wouldn't go through it after that.

<img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/frown.gif">

Peter




ICQ:# 10237808

I use IE5 and a cable modem. and your things loaded pretty fast.

Hehehe. I thought the text was a foreign language until I looked at it a third time. But I'm slow to catch that kind of thing. I like the concept though.

It seems you put the site specs and link way at the bottom so people can choose whether to view it. I don't know if it would be better to eliminate the need to scroll down, or marinate the page in simplicty as is. I only felt the initial visual was slightly empty.

I REALLY like the gray-on-gray color scheme and the artwork in index2. Unfortunately for me, on 800x600, much of the beautiful graphic work appeared to be too big for the page. The bottom part of the graphic was covered by the NEWS box and the right side of the graphic was partly cut off. I was glad I didn't get a horizontal scroll bar, but I wanted to see what I was missing. By the way, I like the color scheme of the NEWS box too.

Also, on my browser, the Tip of the Day/NAV box covered part of the NEWS box.

Overall, I really like your ideas and artwork and color scheme. I just wish I could see it all.

I went a couple of pages deeper, but I had problems with size there too. I have no complaints about your choice of screen resolution, so just to let you know, my visitor databases indicate that most of the visitors to my sites are using 800x600.

You have good taste. If I used a compatible resolution, I would have enjoyed it more. Keep up the good work.

...swept out through the cracks beneath the door...

Yep, I'm agreeing with most of what I've read so far. I opened this up and considered it just as a picture, and decided I *loved* the gray on gray header/interface, the shading was cool, it felt right, felt nice. Then I also noticed that I had to maximize my window in order to view it, and I'm running at 1024x768. I *hate* maximizing my browser window, hate it hate it HATE IT. Then I thought of the 50%+ who still run at 800x600, and realized we have problems here!

Basically, what I would want to do with this site if it was mine would be first to re-do the top interface/header to make it more screen friendly. I would then want to consider re-doing the text treatments on the content area, it was kind of bland, kind of boring. Needed work IMHO.

On another note, I was reading at this website called www.SearchEngines.com about how best to designe your site to be ranked well with the search engines. They actually had a good rationalization for why to use splash screens. Apparently many of the search engines dislike (or misunderstand) frames, and also freak out on fancier coding techniques. Splash screens become a nifty way to talk to the robots and also first time viewers, describing what is ahead. Maybe this could be done with a cookie, only first timers see the splash screen? Anyways, I'm not 100% against splash screens, seems like there's still value to be squeezed from these.

Your pal, -doc-

THANK YOU EVERYONE!!! .. i cant tell you how good it feel to have some proper constructive crit. :-)

ok so the bigest problem was with the res. just looked at your screenshot darkgarden and nearly died :-( i totaly forgot about 800/600.. ( hangs head in shame ). i'm going to reduce the size of the top gfx by about 25% i think.

the reson i put in in frames is becaseu i really wanted a fast loading page. and i figered if the top gfx only have to load once :-)...

i tryed adding colors to the interface but i couldent really get anything happening there. but i'll try to get some color into the text.

and about the splash page i wanted it there to tell ppl that you needed a high res and that it was gfx intencive. and also to put my hit counter (hang head in shame again) i'm reading over to that link now doc thanx :-)

i'll tweek all the thinks you said mikeymilker.

and thanx of the comment rancid!! i'll fix it up so it works in 800/600 res

and once again i cant say how much this has helped me :-) thanx alot guys and girls *throws hugs all around* hehe lol !!!

::cough::

Sometimes it's tough not being online enough during the weekends.. I've gotten out of the habit of working during the weekends (good plan) and gotten into the habit of spending time with the people that really matter in my life (good plan)...So, what I mean to say is that I was planning on saying something about this site (what with the topic having my name in it and such) but I didn't see it until Sunday night.

...so I hereby agree with everything that has been said, and, unfortunately, I have nothing to add, except I really like it, if for the frames. So...Bravo. <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

(edit) typos

[This message has been edited by twItch^ (edited 18-12-2000).]